How a Workplace Can Truly Win Employees’ Hearts..?

A survey-based report recently released by
JLL confirms that Indian employees are the most engaged in the world. 69% of
the Indian respondents feel ‘very engaged’ at work – way above the global
average of 40%. China ranks second-highest with a 50% score, while Japan lags
far behind with a mere 27% feeling engaged at work.

Basis these findings, here’s how India
stacks up against the world:

Country

Employees feeling ‘very engaged’ at work

Employees feel they can work effectively

Working in an open plan setup

Office density

India

69%

74%

43%

52%

Hong Kong

23%

35%

70%

39%

Japan

27%

37%

60%

68%

Australia

38%

48%

51%

37%

China

36%

49%

20%

32%

Global

40%

51%

40%

45%

These findings led to an interesting
question – what is the key ingredient for an effective and engaging workplace
which can truly win the hearts of its employees? JLL dove deeper to analyse
this, and found that the fairly simple answer to what contributes to a high
employee engagement score– great workplace design – may only be superficial.

While 69% of the Indian employees
feel ‘very engaged’ at work, only 43% currently working in an
open-plan setup. Further, an interesting finding on Japan surfaced. Japan is
a front-runner of the open workspaces concept in APAC, but it still reports
only 27% employee engagement at work. This would indicate that
it may not be only an open plan office setup that makes a workplace highly
conducive for employee engagement. There has to be more to it.

To second this, we discovered that
while China is second after India with 50% respondents
reporting engagement at work, only 20% of its working
population currently work in open plan setups. JLL also discovered that Chinese
offices are the least crowded (32%) – half the density seen in
Japan (68%).

This is certainly food for thought. Low
office density means higher penetration of innovative facilities and amenities,
which directly correlate to higher employee engagement and effectiveness.
Matching this finding to the fact that close to 50% of the Chinese respondents
report feel that their organisations let them work effectively, we can conclude
that office density has a role to play in making workplaces effective
and engaging. This is further vouchsafed by the fact that Japan
reports 27% employee engagement with 68% office density.

Another interesting China-related
finding was that Chinese employees are most willing to embrace change. 76% are
willing to move to an open-plan layout in exchange for better workplace
amenities, and 60% are willing to relinquish their personal
workspaces in favour of hot-desking.

Australia presents an interesting contrast - though 51% of
polled employees report being comfortable with working in open-plan offices,
there is also some resistance for further change evident - nearly 1/3rd
of employees are reluctant to shift to hot-desking. What can we learn from this?

Certainly, it could indicate that change
management programmes are as important as change itself in driving
employee effectiveness and engagement, especially in the more agile workplace
environments of today where new office layouts and innovative space offerings
are on the rise.

A key take-away..!

The question is no more related to which workplace
design works best. The real question is how a workplace can create excellent
Human Experiences and win the trust of employees to make them more receptive to
change. Basically, it is all about creating workplaces that really work for their
employees – and here, change management plays an inevitable role.

How a Workplace Can Truly Win Employees’ Hearts..?
Reviewed by S. Chitra
on
October 28, 2017
Rating: 5 How a Workplace Can Truly Win Employees’ Hearts ..? by Mr. Anurag Mathur, JLL India A survey-based report recently released by ...